Northern Forest Atlas

If you're in the Paul Smith's College neighborhood this weekend...

Comparative pages arrays of images showing critical characters are the gold standard for photo identification. A page like this can replace hundreds of words of description and make a book more focused and compact. For it to work, the photos need to focus on the significant details, the sharpness and lighting need to be uniform, and the background needs to be suppressed to facilitate comparison. We also scale the images subtly; the buds, for example, are scaled correctly relative to each other, but not relative to the leaves or acorns.

We shoot with color-balanced lighting against a distant black background, use accessory lights to brighten shadows and reduce contrast, and then replace the background with a rich RGB (0,0,0) black. The background sharpens the edges and brightens the dark tones of buds and twigs. It limits the amount of text we can use white text is tiring to read so we design the photographic books with minimal text. Note the full depth of field, detail in the shadows, and gradations of dark colors.

Based on reports in other areas of the northern forest, now is the time that the Eastern fairy-ladyslipper (Calypso bulbosa var. americana) could be flowering i...n Northern New York. This tiny early flowering orchid was once found at many sites in New York, but has not been seen for decades. Search in areas near cold bogs or fens in forests dominated by northern white cedar and underlain by limestone; maybe we will recover a few sites. This image from Michigan's Upper Peninsula, May 14. See more

Today in the northern forest.

For (northern forest) cat lovers.

Happy #NationalBirdDay! Our #IBirdNY program provides info on: - Getting started with birding - Where you can find birds... - Upcoming events: http://on.ny.gov/IBirdNY The Northern Cardinal is a fairly large, long-tailed songbird with a short, very thick bill and a prominent crest. Male cardinals are brilliant red all over, with a reddish bill and black face immediately around the bill. Females are pale brown overall with warm reddish tinges in the wings, tail, and crest. They have the same black face and red-orange bill. The male cardinal, like the one shown here, will fiercely defend its breeding territory from other males. When a male sees its reflection in glass surfaces, it frequently will spend hours fighting the imaginary intruder. : Scott Tudman

Fabulous news for the northern forest

Moving on from the mink, otter, and snowshoe hare track photos I posted last week, let's not forget there are plants in the woods, and they are beautiful and of... enormous importance. Here's one of my favorites: wintergreen, or teaberry. Botanists call it, not very poetically, Gaultheria procumbens. Wintergreen seems an excellent plant to think about and focus on this winter. As a virus fills our hospitals, makes dramatic temporary changes in the way we live our lives, and steals away people we care about, it might be worthwhile to contemplate how this lowly plant gets by in the world. It hunkers down, keeping a low profile. It maintains a thick skin. It can tolerate horrific cold and hot summer days. And its fruits are sweet but not too sweet, like most of the rest of us. Always a treat to find wintergreen in the winter woods!

Oh hey there, buddy.